Town Council Website Redesign
The Brief
Recently, we were lucky enough to be awarded the contract to redesign Langport Town Council’s website, called Langport Life. The website is a complex mixture of town council information like meeting agendas and directory listings of local businesses combined with the latest events. The Town Council required a new website that would both provide easy access to Council information whilst also promoting the town to visitors and making it easy to find other useful resources.
The old site had become a bit outdated and difficult to navigate, it also took up quite a lot of time to update listings and events. The new website had to reduce the workflow of the town clerk by allowing users to add their own listings, edit events and provide an income that would cover the costs of the new website.
The Solution
We are Chain planned the new website from the bottom up and started by collating all of the information that needed to be presented. We then undertook an audit of this information to decide where it fitted in the new website and how it should be presented.
We then developed a navigational structure, incorporating the Town Council information with more basic pages like walking and cycling in Langport.
The Design
The Design team started work at this point knowing the overall structure of the website. The website was built in WordPress to ensure a continuation of usability for the town clerk. It is important to understand the know how of the team who will manage the website in the long term and make it simple to make changes. Three sets of designs were handed over to the council from which they could make their choices. Upon completion of the feedback, we started the website build.
The new website has been divided into coloured sections to enable users to understand where they are. This was an important request from the council.
Applications
A major part of the bried was for users to be able to log in and add their own shops and services without having to interact with the town Clerk. They also needed to be able to add and edit their own events. We selected 2 of our favourite plug-ins that would bring this ability to life. They also needed to be able to take payment for listing of a certain nature.
We decided on three types of listing, free, basic and enhanced. Each has its own price tag and enables the user to add more or less content depending on their level. This also means there are some incoming funds that help cover the costs of the website going forward.
The result
The website has been live for a couple of weeks now and feedback is positive. We beleive we stand out from other agencies in that we incorporate a 3 month period of bedding in and training to make sure the website works at its best. Events are regularly added and new business listings are also being added as awareness grows.
The new website has resulted in a reduced workload for the council and easy ability for them to update anything they want. We also ensure that the website is backed up every night in case of breakage that can be repaired by reinstalling the previous days version.
